BUDDHISM AND POLITICS 5 authority and revenues. Buddha's sermons proclaim rejection of the Brahmanic beliefs and practices, refusal to recognize a God, spirits and magic, to be replaced by the personal effort of man, detachment from all that is conducive to unhappiness. He also advocated the end of social inequality perpetuated by the varna system and religious sanctions. By the institution of the sangha, Buddha aimed at a separation of religion from the state, and preached that men of religion should not get involved in political matters. These were the social conditions out of which Buddhism arose, wliich provide the key to an understanding of the values that Buddha wanted to introduce. The connection between Buddhism and the state is central to this analysis. In all the countries under review, a fundamental link had been established (and still exists in the case of Thailand) between the monarchical political system and Buddhism. The main question is to know why. We will have recourse to history again, starting with India in the third century B C and continuing with some sociological analyses and reflections about the relations between Buddhism and the state. State Religion Buddhist expansion in India followed the development of a mercantile economy which originated in the north during the seventh century B G and in the south from the third. From the seventh century B C, Persia and its capital city Seleucia attained a degree of economic development which made it, for several centuries, the centre of west Asia. Persian merchants came to north India and encountered the political atomization and the peculiar socio-religious situation already described. This is why Cyrus made the conquest of a part of north India in 530 B G, to assure for himself the riches of Kashmir. Two centuries later one of his successors, Darius, unified all the kingdoms on the great merchants9 routes between India and Seleucia. It was also the beginning of the formation of merchant groups among the Vaisyas and of important commercial centres in the Indo-Gangetic plain. Alexander the Great who defeated Darius did not remain for long in the commercial centres of the territories formerly occupied by the Persians, but he succeeded in politically unifying the small kingdoms and laid the foundations of the empire that the ^auryan dynasty built. Foreign occupation lasting for more than two centuries and the development of the mercantile activities meant a serious blow to Brahmanism, especially in the urban milieux. The cities were not only commercial centres, but foci of political activity. As centres of consumption and absorption of the economic surplus, many Buddhist and Jain monasteries established themselves in these cities, bringing the Kshatriyas and the Vaisyas into close contact with the new religions. Military and